Crystal Palace need to ditch their rotten apple as fast as possible

Jean-Philippe Mateta and his representatives are arguing that the final year of his Crystal Palace deal, triggered in 2024 thanks to a club option within the deal, is invalid. The matter has been heard by an independent tribunal under Premier League rules, with the contract still viewed as binding, prompting the Frenchman to take his case to Fifa, who have subsequently said that it is not within their jurisdiction to overrule the agreement. Now that the nuts and bolts of the story have been fully established, can we address how utterly bonkers it is? A man who started Pierre Sage’s managerial debut in Palace’s opening defeat at Everton on Saturday is seemingly locked in a legal battle with the club. To say that our supporters’ relationship with Mateta is complicated would be the definition of an understatement. Mateta started Palace’s opening defeat at Everton on Sunday (Photo: Getty) In his first three seasons with the club, he scored a combined 10 goals in 67 appearances across all competitions and eight in 58 in the Premier League, only for the arrival of Oliver Glasner to provoke a relative explosion in front of goal that saw him bag 16 in the top flight alone across the 2023-24 campaign on his way to winning the club’s Player of the Year award. The following season brought trophy success with it, Mateta scoring 17 in all competitions as Palace went on to lift the FA Cup for the first time in club history, with him then scoring the all-important winner from close range the following May as the Eagles got the better of Rayo Vallecano in the Conference League final. It is the sort of turnaround that feels like a footballing fairytale, but alongside the glory there are well-founded frustrations too. First and foremost, despite the sizeable uptick in his goal return, he remains genuinely wasteful. In both of his last two seasons, he has noticeably underperformed his xG, with the 3-3 home draw against Bournemouth in October 2025 the best example I could give of just how frustrating he can be to watch. He scored a hat-trick that day, which in isolation is fantastic, but when you consider that he had 11 (yes, eleven) shots, you start to realise that his numbers should be far better than they are in reality. It was on display at Everton this weekend just gone too, with his second big miss of the day striking the post when it looked easier to get it on target. There is a pattern which any Palace fan with skin in the game will tell you isn’t going anywhere soon. Alongside that, you can point towards his refusal to sign fresh terms with the club across 18 months or more, a very public push to force through a move to AC Milan at the back end of the January transfer window that eventually fell apart because his knee wasn’t up to the Italians’ medical scrutiny, and this latest incident regarding a contract he voluntarily signed back in 2022. Read more The Score: My kneejerk Premier League takes after one weekend Special report: The transfer window that broke Fabrizio Romano All in all, it smacks of a player who thinks he is bigger than the club who are paying his wages and, despite the inevitable pearl-clutching media reaction over our chances of success this season if we were to greenlight his sale in the final few days of the window, I for one would be in favour of it. A football club and its players need to be bonded in spirit if it is to achieve its aims from year to year. With that in mind, you simply cannot have your starting striker actively attempting to extricate himself from a contract while continuing to fluff his lines with the goal at his mercy.